The New Marketing Landscape

[TreeBones]

The New Marketing Landscape

Rapidly growing popularity of Social Media has brought traditional marketing strategies to the brink of complete failure. If your business has not changed tactics and moved forward with today’s trends brought about by the Internet you may find competitors leaving you in the dust.

Sales driven push tactics (disruption marketing) will not work with Social Media. We've reached the turning point where pull strategies (attraction marketing) has surpassed the importance of value hunter push strategies. Anyone still depending on this method will fall behind other businesses that grasp the importance of changes in Social Media. Strategies that have adopted Social Media and keep this closely aligned with quality, reputation and support will be tomorrow’s leaders in this ever-changing worldwide marketing tactic.

In the past an unhappy customer complaint left for a few days would not disrupt sales. Today just a few hours or less is enough time to post negative reviews viewable to the world. With today’s lightning fast lines of communication one unhappy customer can Blog a message seen by thousands even millions in an instant. Consumers look to friends for recommendations and reviews before making a buying decision. This is where Social media has changed the landscape of marketing strategies. Facebook, Twitter, My Space and groups of consumer specific forums and clubs have created a network of information that reaches around the globe. At times this can go viral to the point of making or breaking a business overnight.

Information in the public eye is now in the hands of average people with access to the Internet. Good reviews and positive input from the public through Social Media can propel a small business to great heights. On the other hand having your reputation bashed will send customers to another supplier potentially shutting down an entire business.


Recognizing the power of the constantly changing Internet and applying it to your Social Marketing Strategy is the key to success. Once upon a time pushing your products and services by exposing your business to as many consumers as possible led to sales. The more you advertised the more sales you landed. Today customer satisfaction by means of education before the sale and reputation and support after the sale is more likely to keep your business strong.

As time allows I will be writing more on this subject and how Sawyers can apply it here at Saw bucks.

[redbeard]

I have a small following that visit sawbucks just to keep up on what iam building and whats new with the sawmill. My facebook page has a link to sawbucks also. Standing by your work and giving customers a honest deal always brings them back and there friends.

[TreeBones]

I try to monitor the traffic we have here and there is a steady flow of visitors that just read without becoming a member. Some of them are new to this site just looking for the first time but it has always been my guess that a portion of them are repeat followers of our topics and members. Redbeard's followers is a good example of the positive effects we strive for.

As has been noted in the past that some are woodworkers looking for unique lumber and sawmill services and have followed up with purchases. "The goal of this forum is to provide a community platform to benefit individuals and businesses where we can share skills while having a fun, inspiring, and informative experience." This has held up to be true with the exception of a single incident that resulted in one unhappy customer.

In our line of trade most of us are owner operators are not as vulnerable to the extremes like employees who can be terminated over careless conduct on the web. There have been many workers fired because of inappropriate Social Media conduct. Here is a link to some recent examples: http://www.firerescue1.com/labor-issues/articles/859991-Dont-get-fired-for-Facebook-10-ways-to-use-social-media-safely/